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Hey everybody, hope you are all looking forward to your weekend ahead!

This week I thought we could talk about the science behind the actual coffee beans – it’s easy to forget these days with your instant coffee and self-foaming drinks that once that your coffee was a little green bean thousands of miles away.

The coffee plant (a tropical evergreen shrub, genus Coffea) started off being grown in Africa and is now mainly grown in The Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. If like me, you have no idea where that is then this picture should help.

There are two main types of coffee beans that are used in commercial drinks and these are the Arabica and Robusta beans.

The Arabicaplant has dark green leaves and is quite large. It takes around 7-9 months to be able to pick the cherries (where the beans live), which contain two seeds on average.

Arabica Plant

In contrast the Robusta plant is a small tree which grows to about 10 metres. It takes the beans around 10-11 months to mature in this species. The beans are also more oval and smaller than Arabica.

Robusta Plant

The overall trend for these beans is that the robusta is far more outgoing than the Arabica. Robusta can handle hotter temperatures (24-30°Cvs 15-24°C) and are easier to grow and maintain. One reason for this is the level of caffeine you find inside.

The Robusta beans have about double the amount of caffeine. This is thought to be a safety mechanism as the bitter flavour deters insects from biting into their delicious flesh. This is why Arabica does better at higher altitudes as there are less pesky bugs hanging out there.

Sunday mornings. They can be hectic – rushing around trying to get your last-minute errands done before the new week starts, or they can be chill and relaxing – the calm before the weekly chaos begins again. However, you spend it I think we can agree that a coffee in hand makes it a more pleasant experience.

Have you ever thought of how much your Sunday coffee is impacting the environment though? To the outside eye your takeaway coffee cup just looks a paper outside and plastic lid – however there are more sinister things lurking beneath the surface. The inner lining of the cup is made of polyethylene plastic which can’t be recycled in New Zealand and so means every single take away cup you ever have had is on a landfill, as it becomes too costly to remove the plastic away from the paper.

There is now a move to make your takeaway cups compostable instead. Most of the cup will be made of plant material instead. For example ecoware uses a plastic that is made from sugarcane or corn starch. These plastics (polylactic acid or polylactide) are not only biodegradable but also come from a renewable source. However, these cups can still not be recycled.

Compostable and and biodegradable mean different things too, so be careful and keep this in mind when companies market their products.

Biodegradable: Can be broken down quickly by microbes. It has also seen that plastics in landfills release methane gas which is contributing to global warming (which is 100% true, no matter what the FAKE NEWS says.)

It can be hard to guarantee that the café you visit has these compostable cups though, so if you want to take matters into your own hands you can always buy a reusable cup.

I recently purchased a cup off http://nz.keepcup.com/ and love it!! The site allows you to pick your own colour scheme as well as picking from a range of types and colours. These cups are also made of fully recyclable materials so can be shipped off at the end of its life (which is apparently 3 years +). During these 3 years, you alone would have contributed 2.7 kgs of plastic to the landfill. The only downside of these is carrying them around – but are fine if you know in advance you are getting a drink.

Baristas are always happy to use other cups (it makes less dishes for them) 👍

Another alternative is always to take a break and sit down and enjoy a nice ol’ fashioned have here coffee.

Happy drinking friends! Hope you are now enlightened to the effects of your weekly coffee cups. 😀